Thanks Plane Therapist. I’ve selected aquila for ringtone, not None. Regarding notifications there’s no indications of any being blocked, but under the heading ‘Notification access’ it states ‘apps cannot read notifications’, and clicking on that yields ‘no notification listeners are installed’ . hugh

Not sure if this is your issue, but at least on some of the older Moto phones, such as E1, a connection inside would become loose. I saw this happen to a relative’s phone when dropped. In that case, the solution was to apply a healthy amount of pressure to the area of the screen around the speaker. In essence you may need to squeeze that part of the phone between your fingers. I hope you get this figured out!

Thank you Nathan and Johnny5. It was indeed a hardware issue, and pressing the screen helps bring the sound back, right now intermittently, but as I explore I hope to get it back permanently. Thanks again. Well done ! Hugh